The One That Got Away
by cltaylor
Summary: Scene is set after TS. Steph takes a little vacation to Point Pleasant and picks up a new admirer.


_August Challenge of an awkward/unusual stalker: Plum Fics_

_Rating: I'll stick with 'PG-13'. Probably not going to get graphic on either side of the spectrum, but playing it safe._

_Spoilers: Nada, none, zilch, unless you count the first book where Steph is introduced and if you hadn't read at least one book with Stephanie Plum in it, then why are you reading the fan fiction? Okay I give up… Consider this a warning against all books including that latest one… what was it called… oh yeah… Twelve Sharp._

_A/N: Okay… Stayce… I'll tell you what… You are an evil woman for suggesting that I write this up. This is a little story about an usually stalker that you don't hear about everyday…It's partially a true one at that..._

_This is not my usual brand of fic. And quite a laughable attempt at writing some comedy. Utter crap if you ask me. But it's been sitting around for over a month now, I guess I should share the love. You've been warned..._

* * *

The One that Got Away…

* * *

**When** you think about vacations, you think about relaxing and enjoying yourself, right? Well, when your name is Stephanie Plum, that saying 'there is no rest for the wicked' is a true statement.

Three weeks ago after the latest of my usual brand of psychos tried to kill me; I finally decided I needed a well-deserved break. A break to relax, kick back and chill out, even if it was at the shore. I made my decision and started looking into taking off for a couple of days. I had no sooner picked up my phone to call and book a reservation at a hotel right off the coastline, than Ranger slipped into my apartment. Under the door like smoke or through the door like a ghost, I don't know how he does it and I don't ask. Ranger has his ways.

"Yo." I said to him, keeping my back turned away and punching the numbers into the cell phone.

"Yo, yourself." Ranger replied, moving through the apartment like he lived there.

I shot him a look. "Are you looking for the bogeyman or what?"

He turned at the doorframe of my bedroom and raised an eyebrow in my general direction.

"Right…" I said. I was constantly being told that my apartment was a hazard to my health and unsafe as standing out on the street with your back turned to the world. I had this argument with Ranger and Morelli. I tell them both the same thing over and over again.

"This," I would say, "This is my space. This is where I live. This is where I sleep. This is where I belong. If you have a problem with that, you can go fly a kite as far as I'm concerned!" Okay, so the ending is something I would like to say, but it depends on the man what kind of response I get. Morelli will blow up and tell me I'd have to be insane to stay there. Any kindergartener with half a brain can pick my front door lock. Ranger, with his unreadable expressions would just say, "Babe." And leave it at that. Most of the time. Sometimes he threatened to drag me off to a safe house, but we had both came to the conclusion that probably wasn't the safest of ideas. And that wasn't because of the stalker issues. We had issues between us that hadn't even begun to be solved yet.

Joseph Morelli is my off-again, on-again boyfriend and right now we are in the between stages of that sort of relationship. He's just a little over six foot tall, lean and cop movie star good looking, with bedroom eyes that make a girl's heart stop beating. He works for the Trenton Police Department as a homicide detective. His job is tough and he's a good detective. I've known him most of my life and I don't claim that all of those years have been great. We have history. A lot of history. He says he loves me, and I told him that I loved him, but was I 'in love with him', that was still left for the jury to decide.

Morelli has been in my adult life now for a few years and we are still rebounding off each other. I don't call him my boyfriend in public and he doesn't call me his girlfriend. He calls me when 'the boys' miss me, buys me dinner and then we roll around in bed for twelve hours straight. Those days have been few and far between lately and Ranger has been moving in on the ground that Morelli has lost.

Ranger is a recently new addition to my life. He goes by the Ranger on the streets but his real name is Carlos Manoso and is one big mystery to me still. He owns a security company named RangeMan and has branches scattered in four different cities, that I know about. He's got a daughter named Julie that he very rarely sees and until recently never planned on spending much time with because he thought his life would just bring unnecessary danger to her. But a psycho named Scrog had changed all that, and now Julie was curious about her birth father. And she was curious about me.

Ranger was just about six feet tall, has dark chocolate eyes and mocha latte skin, hard in places you can only imagine about and moves like the wind. Sometimes when we are standing in a room together, I can feel the sexual tension hovering between us. Once our eyes meet in a crowded room, I couldn't look away. I don't know what it was called other then a bad case of lust, but it was something that was boiling away in my blood. I had been trying to get rid of it without acting on it, but sometime hormones don't listen to the brain.

Ranger took a couple of step, closing in on the space between us. He reached out and took a look at the readout screen.

"Who are you calling?"

"Is it any of your business?"

"Babe."

I sighed and he leaned against the kitchen counter facing me.

"What's with the attitude today?" He asked me.

I shrugged my shoulders. "It's no different today than any other day."

The corners of Ranger's mouth tipped up slightly and when the light caught his eyes they were dancing with amusement. Great, I thought. I'm ranking on the Ranger's meter of humor. That was low.

"I'm going away." I said to him. "I need a break."

Ranger didn't reply and was studying me. "Need a break from…"

"I'm just going to the shore for a couple of days." I said quickly. "Not a big deal. I just need alone time and I can't get that here." I didn't add that I couldn't get alone time here because I'm either being tracked by the Merry Men of RangeMan or being watched by loony tunes. I figured what was left unspoken was already known between us.

"And what does Morelli have to say about that?" Ranger asked me.

I shot him a look that shouted 'fuck you'. "Since when does Morelli make my decisions?"

"Easy, Tiger." Ranger told me, "When are you leaving?"

"When I make the arrangements for me to get out of town."

Ranger looked me up and down, and fingered a wild curl that had escaped from my ponytail.

"You didn't ask the boss if you could go."

I rolled my eyes at him and batted his hand away. I couldn't think when he was doing things like that to me. Ranger didn't have to really touch me to send my raging hormones out of control. Anytime he was within my reach, I couldn't control myself. And the bad thing about that was that he knew it.

"I told the boss that pays my bills." I looked up at Ranger. "I do side jobs for you. I figure that is a need to know basis. And you don't need to know."

He tipped his head back and laughed. And I could help but smirk. After all those years of listening to his half assed replies, I'd finally gotten in one of my own. Felt good to be on the other side. I pushed him playfully and Ranger caught my hands in his own. He didn't move, instead he lowered his gaze back to my own and the temperature in the room shot up about ten degrees. He was keeping the playing around mild today. He must have things to do, I thought.

"I have a place at Point Pleasant." Ranger told me, using his thumbs to stroke the palms of my hands. I had heat rushing to places that didn't need it, and I was pretty sure that I was going to be in need of a cold shower after he was through.

"And?" I squeaked out.

"Think about it." Ranger told me as he brought the palms of my hands to his lips and caressed each one before pulling me into him and dropping a light kiss on my lips. A small smile played at his lips as he looked into my eyes and I realized I had curled myself into him, fingers gripping onto the front of his shirt like it was my life support. I pried my fingers away and pushed away from him slightly so that I wasn't completely being supported by him. Ranger smiled at my expression and turned to leave, letting himself out of the apartment without another word. I let him go. I was out of my mind. All these thoughts of Ranger's place in Point Pleasant were wondering through my mind, and the main thought was being at Point Pleasant, with him, alone. I had to find a different way.

* * *

**I** had been in Point Pleasant for a week. It had been a week of relaxation and walking on the beach, and I was ready to leave. I was bored out of my mind! There was a lot to be said for peace and quiet and it just wasn't my thing.

Taking Ranger up on his offer probably wasn't the smartest of ideas. At the time, I was not thinking clearly but in my haste to get away and finding out everything was already booked because of summer vacations, I did it anyway.

Ranger didn't come along with me. He brought me here, made sure that no one had followed us and no one was hiding in a dark corner of the place. He shared a few hot kisses and a moment of me melting into the wall and incoherent moaning on my part; but that was it. He left promptly after that and I can't say as I blame him. We were stuck between a rock and a hard place, and that was with no pun intended. One more minute alone in a beach house and I would have made sure he didn't leave.

Lula had tagged along for the show and since this would be our last day of freedom, we'd chosen to walk down to the beach and have a quiet day of laying out. Lula was wearing a hot pink tankini and people were blatantly staring at her as we walked down the beach. Lula was oblivious to such staring and in my opinion I thought she looked pretty damn good. Hot pink was a good color for her. Me, I was wearing this little black string bikini number that Lula had talked me into when we were in Macy's. I wasn't entirely comfortable with the amount of skin I was showing off, but what the hell? I only live once.

We were carrying our beach bags and looking for a good place to hang out for the day, discussing the merits of knock off to the real thing when I stumbled over a crab.

I had to stutter step to miss it, and ended up tripping over my own two feet and went head first into the sand. I looked back and the crab was looking my way, pinchers up in the air, giving me the stare down of all centuries. I heard a bubble of laughter escape from Lula and I glanced up through my sunglasses.

"That crab don't look none too happy wit' you." Lula told me. "You best move before it takes your pinky toe as a souvenir."

The crab danced towards me and I scrambled backwards. Lula gave a bark of laughter and side stepped the crab, holding out her hand to me.

"Girlfriend, please! You ain't scared of lunch are you?"

I looked from her to the crab as she pulled me up onto my feet. Damn right I was scared. Scared it would run off with my pinky toe. I'd never be able to wear open toed FMP's again if it took off my pinky toe. I'd be a freak of nature.

"No." I told her. I kept my eyes on the crab and took a step backwards. It jumped forward towards me and I shrieked.

"Huhn." Lula said, shaking her head. She had a smile creased across her face. "You ain't scared at all."

As if the crab was laughing at me, it stood still staring at me until Lula tugged on my shoulder strap of the beach bag.

"Come on and stop starin' at the damn thing. It ain't gonna spread wings and attack you." She was power walking ahead of me. I was following slowly behind her, shooting glances over my shoulder to where the crab had been. It was now gone, like a figment of my imagination. "I'd swear you'd never been to the shore with the way your actin'."

Tank was following us, walking about 50 feet behind us. Tank had remained behind when Ranger left. Ever since the fiasco behind the porn shop, Lula and Tank had been as thick as thieves. Lula had been bunking with Tank and it was a good thing too. I didn't want first hand knowledge on how 'big' Tank was all over.

I gave Tank a finger wave and Tank nodded his head to me.

"Right here." Lula said to me. I turned my head back around and Lula had spread out her beach towel and set up the portable radio she had brought along. I looked out at the ocean and up at the sun. It was the perfect combination of the best things about vacation all rolled into one activity.

I dropped my bag down into the sand and pulled out my beach towel. I spread it out next to Lula and laid down on my stomach, arms crossed underneath my chin. I closed my eyes and listened to Lula flip through her Cosmopolitan magazine and sing along with the radio.

I flipped over and took one of the extra magazines that Lula had brought along. I flipped it open and read all about how aliens were silently stalking us through technology and about laboratory mice could actually speak French. I laughed and went to put the magazine back when I felt something scrape against the arch of my foot.

"What the…" I said, tossing the magazine away and lifting my foot at the same time.

Beady little black eye dots stared back at me. I watched as his claw seemed to move in slow motion towards my foot and I sprang into action. I moved so fast that I was running on the beach towel like a Scooby Doo cartoon. The towel was moving underneath me, but I wasn't going anywhere.

"Girl…" Lula said jumping up. "What's your deal?"

I threw a glance behind me and the crab was scrambling closer and I put the pedal to the metal. I took off, the crab trailing behind me.

"Come back here!" Lula yelled after me. "It's just a crab!"

A crab that was hell bent on revenge. I thought to myself. I ran down the beach, onlookers tossing curious looks my way. I was too busy concentrating on keeping one foot in front of the other to toss them a gesture that didn't mean, 'have a nice day'. I circled back and ran through the wet sand as the tide came up. I got around the crab and came back up onto the hill. I was walking, and out of breath, when I took a glance back behind me and the little orange blur was scrambling up to me in a hurry.

I shrieked and in my haste to get away, tripped over my own to feet and stumbled to the sand. I shot a glance towards my feet and the crab was barely two inches away, snapping his claws and dancing from side to side.

Why me? I thought. What did I do to deserve this?

I pulled my feet in and the claw reached out to pinch me. I kicked out and caught the crab with the heel of my foot. It went sailing backwards and I hopped up, running back up to the beach, where I noticed an extra person standing beside Tank and Lula.

Ranger.

Mental head slap. I look like a total idiot running down the beach in a black string bikini that is barely big enough to cover up Mary Alice.

One corner of his mouth was tilted up and the sunglasses hid the amusement in his eyes.

"Babe."

I could feel his eyes raking down my body and the silence between the four of us was deafening.

"Pick up an unusual stalker?" Ranger asked. I heard Lula snort and I shot her a look.

"Yeah." I told him, "I was the one that got away."

* * *

**_The End_**


End file.
